STEVEN Adams, once of The Broken Family Band and Singing Adams, has a new band, leaving behind several years of one-man shows and the intimacy of his 2016 solo album Old Magick.

Step forward, the new Adams' "family", The French Drops, as heard on the album Virtue Signals – out tomorrow on Hudson Records – and at The Fulford Arms in York on Saturday, when Adams will perform with drummer Daniel Fordham and bassist David Stewart, the rhythm section with psych-folk oddballs The Drink and Singing Adams guitarist Michael Wood.

"I had four or five years of doing it on my own and I started to get sick of the sound of my own voice on my own and felt I'd gone as I could with that sound," says Steven. "I thought it was time to do something different and it was about two years ago that I started talking with Daniel and David."

Woods came on board too, having played on The Singing Adams album, and the three were joined on the album recording sessions by Laurie Earle. "I knew him well; he'd played with Dan Michaelson & The Coastguards, and Dan is one of my dear friends, and though Laurie was non-committal at first, with two young children, I told him, if I could do it, so could he!"

Adams and co worked on songs for up to a year before the album was recorded in a little over a week, in September 2017, at Half Ton Studios in Cambridge, produced by Ben Nicholls, who plays with Nadine Shah and Cara Dillon, as well as leading his own Kings of the South Seas project.

Steven put his initial ambivalence about having a producer to one side. "Ben’s head is full of music. He came to a rehearsal and started making the occasional suggestion about songs and arrangements," he says. "At first we were a bit freaked out, but everything he suggested worked. In the studio he was in charge, which was oddly liberating.”

Virtue Signals rails against the iniquities of the world, albeit wittily with Adams' anger wrapped inside his trademark sweet melodies. "It's important not to lose that sense of incredulity and fury, because that's what 'they' want. Wearing you down is part of the deal bit I think we have a right to righteous anger, though we've leavened it on this album with some actual feelings," he says.

"I found myself writing about that feeling you get when you’ve just woken up and seen what the idiots have done overnight. Like a lot of people, I’m angry and confused about some of the mean, spiteful, cowardly things being said and done in the name of patriotism and cultural identity and economic prosperity. Some of these things can be defused by calling them out, by singing about them, and by laughing at them."

After 16 years of making records, how has Adams' songwriting changed? "I'm probably more self-conscious because I'm wary of re-treading the same ground, as I'm conscious that as a writer you do that, writing the same song over and over, but approaching the same subject from a different angle, so I'm very aware of that," he says. "And I'm better at playing the guitar now!

"I write songs and I play them and I try not to overthink it or to feel reliant on this for anything other than what it is; sounds, words, feelings, and an excuse to hang out with good people. That’s virtue signalling, in case anyone asks."

Steven Adams & The French Drops play The Fulford Arms, York, supported by Triangle Triangle Triangle and Charlie Tophill, on Saturday, 7.30pm. Tickets: £8, in person from the pub or Earworm Records in York and Jumbo Records in Leeds or online from pleasepleaseyou.com